Our Construction Birthday Party!!

Peanut turned four August 21st!!!  I can't believe he's already four, they grow up so fast!  In the past couple of years we have transitioned from having a giant birthday party for each child to having a small family party and a small kids party.  This year for Peanuts fourth birthday we had his party at our house.  I got a Celebrate Express catalog at the hours a few months ago, and I went through, pulled five pages out of the magazine and let Peanut pick his own theme.  This year he chose a Construction Theme which I have to say, turned out to be a really cute theme!

I was able to have custom made invitations created through Vista Print.  We dressed Peanut up in a cute construction outfit and downloaded his picture on to the invitation.  

(Our personal information is blacked out)

The morning of the party, I went out and picked up our balloon order.  A friend of mine and I went out ant decorated while my wonderful husband stayed in side, fed the kids lunch and got Sassy down for a nap.  We wrapped streamers around the swing set and attached balloons and happy birthday signs to the fence.  We set up a table for face painting, filled the sand table with sand and construction toys and filled a kiddie pool (which ended up being the star of the party).  We blocked the driveway off with a car and left out chalk and tricycles for the kids to play with.

 The party started at 2 and ended at 5 so we only really had to serve snacks and cake.  We had water, soda and juice in coolers.  We also had out a veggie platter, watermelon slices, chips, pretzels and chocolate covered strawberries.  I wanted the kids to be able to have most of the snacks too if they wanted them.  The chips and veggies were organic and the strawberries were organic an covered in chocolate from Enjoy Life which is milk chocolate  made from rice milk instead of cows milk.  The kids loved being able to eat most of the snacks and everything was empty when it was time to bring the dishes in to prepare for the cupcakes.

Here is the view of the swing set.

For favors, we filled pails from the Dollar Store with goodies (bubbles, crayons, coloring sheets, Slinky's, wiki stix, stickers and an organic lolly pop.)  I then got hard hats from Celebrate Express and used letter scrap booking stickers (I had found on clearance) and put each child's name on their hard hat.

I went to Toys R Us and bought some inexpensive tool sets ($2-$5 a piece) and put them in a pail of sand as the center piece for the tables.  I also got paint swatches from the hardware store and put them on the table as well.

I printed off a little tag to put on the goodie pails to thank the children for coming to the party.  I mounted them on card stock an put small construction stickers on them as decoration.  The tag says, "Thank-you for joining the crew.  Peanut had fun celebrating his 4th birthday with you!"

For the food table we took black table cloths and used yellow duct tape and made the table into a road.  The trucks are puzzle pieces from on of our infant puzzles.

Walmart was having their toy clearance a couple weeks prior to the party.  They had their construction moon sand set (Moon Sand is gluten free) on clearance so I bought 2 sets.  One the day of the party we assembled the pieces and combined the sand from both sets into one container.

I made our own cupcakes (as well a a few that were gluten free, casein free, egg free, soy free for my kids).  We crushed chocolate and cinnamon graham crackers, crushed them and sprinkled it on top for the "dirt".  I had printed off this construction symbol from Microsoft Publisher, cut them out and glued them to Popsicle sticks from our home school supplies.  Wallah! Cupcake toppers made with what we had around the house!

Peanut enjoyed his cupcake...



And so did Sassy!

 All I can say is, what a great day with great friend and great fun!  I not only had fun during the party but I also had fun planning it and making all of the decorations.  It's days like those that make me feel that we are really blessed.  God is good!

God Bless!

Mommy Provost